


The Serpent

by RumblyStomach



Category: Borderlands
Genre: Blood, Foreshadowing, Marcus Kincaid - Freeform, Other, Pandora - Freeform, Psycho, Skags, Violence, arid badlands, bandit technical, bandits, insane, progression to insanity, salt the wound, sands - Freeform, strip the flesh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 18:14:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,642
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5976472
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RumblyStomach/pseuds/RumblyStomach
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Origin of Pandora's common bandit, the Psycho.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Serpent

_All events take place before the events of the first Borderlands._

Marcus’s bus idled at the cable train station, waiting for the next big-headed young ‘un to board his bus to the Arid Badlands. They always come around eventually, claiming to be the best vault hunter in existence, saying how they’ll bring peace or take over or whatever. Going by dumb fucking names they obviously made up themselves, like “Germ” or “BladeX” or “Brick” or some bullshit like that. None of them last.

On this particular day, only one young hunter joined Marcus on the bus. Called himself “Snake”, what an asshole. He was a smaller guy, decently built, and had a weasel-looking face that matched his personality. He blabbed to something to Marcus stealing cars and robbing stores, cheating out of deals and contracts, and sleeping with naïve girls back home. Basic sleazy asshole stuff.

Marcus offered a story to Snake about Pandora’s population history. Next to his pride-and-joy, _Marcus Munitions_ , Marcus also took pride in his story-telling ability. He offered Snake a tale about one of the finest inhabitants on all of Pandora. With a smirk and a careless gesture, Snake claimed he would listen to Marcus’s fable.

“My grandfather was one of the first men to set foot on this desolate planet, working under the Dahl Corporation, he established Fyrestone with. The first fully-human occupied town with a functional, self-running government on all of Pandora. He then helped build the cable car system and clear the roads and paths that make up Pandora’s bullshit highway system.

“Alright, well, that was my _great-great_ grandfather. Years later my grandfather drove into town with a man who became the leader of one of the most dangerous bandits on Pandora. The discovery of a possible vault on Pandora obviously drove a lot of people towards it. The ones that sought the vault were referred to as ‘vault hunters’.”

“The subject of our story called himself Ryobi. Ryobi strolled off the cable train a stubborn and determined power hungry man. He rode into town on this very bus, back in its better days.” Marcus said gesturing to the rusty old blue vehicle as it rumbled and jerked its way across the flattened desert road. “He was after the same thing you are, the ever-fabled Vault. He had heard stories of the treasure, power, and weapons housed within the place and he wished to capture it all for himself. He was selfish, like you,” Marcus said gesturing to the passenger through the rearview mirror. Seeing the annoyed expression that greeted him, Marcus laughed and continued on.

“Ryobi battled hard; he fought his way through the armies of bandits, monsters, and badasses that inhabit Pandora. You will do this as well. As you may have gathered, pacifists are unwelcome here. Anyone who comes here without looking for a fight’ll get fucked, brutally murdered, robbed, and thrown in a ditch as a meal for the skags. They say you’re already insane if you take a trip to Pandora; what little sanity is left in you will soon dissipate after you meet the crazy fucks that occupy the Badlands.

“Besides not looking for a fight, another thing to avoid on Pandora, is getting lost. Stick to the roads. Our faithful vault hunter wandered too far off the road one day and disappeared into the hostile planet’s cracked desert, many believed he was lost to the sands.

“Our story doesn’t end there, that’s for sure. There’s always another side!” Marcus said, laughing over the rumbling sound of the engine. “They didn’t know that the vault hunter was still alive, but some believe the result to his mistake in direction was worse than death itself. He got himself so irreversibly lost, that the turning sands and brutal heat of Pandora drove him mad.

“Our hunter lost his gawt dayum mind, but that doesn’t happen all at once. There were steps to Ryobi’s insanity. The first is to deny the initial problem, like ‘Okay, the road should be right over here…’ then, ‘Shit, where _is_ the road?’ until eventually, ‘Shitshitshit, there is no road!’ This is what happened to poor old Ryobi.

“The second step is dread, wondering where he went wrong, how he will get back, trying to recall any bit of what he learned from scouts to tell which direction is north. For Ryobi, this step was brief, he desired the vault so badly that he skipped to accepting his fate. He decided that if the boiling Pandorian sands were to take him, then he’d at least work towards finding the vault, by traveling in its last known direction.

“The further Ryobi advanced into the barren sands of Pandora, the more his obsession for the vault grew. As his obsession increased, his sanity decreased. Ryobi traveled for miles, journeying far across the blistering terrain, the entire time he thought only of the vault. He forgot his friends, family, and past, he even forgot himself. He forgot everything and anything that was not the vault. Ryobi forgot his name. He pulled out his hair, consumed chunks of his own skin, and even bit off parts of his tongue so that his voice became distorted and not even he recognized it.

“Ryobi screamed and screamed until his new voice had disappeared and only a whispering ghost of what it once was remained. His deranged mind developed a rational that said if he protected the vault from the hunters (like the one he once was) he would be rewarded by the Gods of Pandora after death.

“There was supposedly a logic that whatever Gods there were gave him a promise that he would receive benefits greater than whatever resided in the vault. But, trust me,” Marcus remarked, “There’s no way there are “Gods” of Pandora! Pandora is a wasteland, and has always been one. No way in hell it was created by Gods of any kind, Judases and Lucifers, maybe, but not Gods.”

“Anyway, where was I…? Ah yes! The desert. The howling vault hunter with a long-lost mind spent his days moving forward shrieking his lungs out as if hoping to fill the empty air with his voice. He screeched nonsense things like Gods and demons, life & death, and the vault. He excreted anything that came to his swirling mind, wailing bits and pieces of foreign languages he’d read or learned somewhere long ago. During the cool nights on the desert, Ryobi dug himself a sleeping hole wherever he was and whimpered gibberish and mumble-speak on his way to sleep.

“The shell of Ryobi ditched his backpack long ago and fashioned himself a buzz-saw axe from parts of his now-useless guns that he had collected from his original journey. He used the weapon to cut open his hands, he then used the fresh blood to paint symbols. He smeared the blood on his body creating his own reinterpretation of the All-Seeing Eye and the Totem of Fire. He left scripture and nonsense words scrawled on his skin in his blood. He let the sun dry and crust the blood, leaving a custom organic tattoo on there.

“The vault hunter found the bones of long lost animals from which he crafted jewelry and knives. The crazed vault hunter stripped off his shirt, leaving his pants and boots on, which were stained orange and brown from the dirty earth of Pandora. He cut and shaped teeth into necklaces roped together with his own hair. Ribs were made into knives that varied in size, which he carried on his belt. One afternoon, after a few hours of screaming, Ryobi tripped and fell over a large sun-bleached dome poking out of the sand. He dug around and pulled out the skull of a deceased skag. He used his axe and cracked the scalp off the animal’s head, making a mask. After cutting a new gash in his hand with a bone knife, he used his blood to paint the vault symbol on his new bone facemask. He donned the mask and called himself the Protector.

“The first bit of civilization the Protector found was a small bandit camp. He managed to convert them with blood rituals and sacrifices to the blood Gods of Pandora. He convinced the weak-minded bandits and badasses there that the Gods would reward them. They just had to protect the land from incoming vault hunters.

“There were people that came after him that copied his ways after also going insane by the thought of the vault and heat of Pandora. Now the remaining semi-sane inhabitants of the Pandora refer to them as the Psychos, not Protectors.”

Marcus glanced in the rearview mirror to the vault hunter at which his story was directed. He had been hoping to see a terrified or at least anxious expression on his passenger’s face, after listening to the tale, but instead, Marcus was greeted by Snake’s sleeping face.

“Well, _I_ thought it was a good story.” Marcus said, annoyed at the vault hunter’s inability to stay awake during his obviously intriguing story.

Marcus threw open a cooler next to the stick shift, reached into the ice water and pulled out a can of beer. He turned around in his seat and let the cool can fly from his hand toward his slumbering rider. The can hit him directly on the forehead and knocked his head back against the only remaining glass window in the entire bus, cracking it.

“Mmeh, then whaa…” The vault hunter mumbled, hardly waking up, then continued to snore. The can left a large red circle on his face, then bounced around on the floor of the bus until it eventually rolled back to Marcus’s seat. “A hard head won’t protect you from the bandits if you can’t even stay awake.” Marcus grumbled under his breath as he cracked open the projectile can, and poured the contents down his throat. The bus continued along the beaten dirty road to Fyrestone.

“Alright, Sleeping Beauty! It’s your stop!” the vault hunter awoke from his slumber to Marcus’s aggravated yell from the front of the bus. He sat up, rubbed his eyes, cracked his knuckles, and collected his duffle bag from the carrying rack above him and made his way to the front of the bus. “I was gonna give you a free clip to promote _Marcus Munitions_ with but since you cracked a fucking window on my grandfather’s bus with that stupid hard head of yours, you owe me.” Marcus held out his hand.

“Fine, fine!” Snake handed over 50 dollars. Marcus grumbled, “How ‘bout you give me a little extra for falling asleep during my story, huh?” Snake sighed angrily and gave him a hundred. Marcus returned to his usual happy-careless mood, laughing, “Alright, vault hunter, you have a great time on Pandora! Now, get the hell off my bus.”

\--

The landscape was barren, grey, and rocky but for a cracked and worn paved road running through from the bus stop and away back from where the bus picked up Snake. The bus stop had an ECHO/New-U station planted on a pole next to a bench. There was also a large faded red warehouse-like building across the street from the bus stop. Snake equipped his two favorite machine guns, LR8 Bruiser and Fn. Boneshredder Stomper, then checked into the ECHO/New-U station.

As Snake was checking in, a voice saying “Hello, Vault Hunter!” scared the shit out of him, causing Snake to open fire in the direction of the voice. After regaining his bearings, Snake realized he had just destroyed a CL4P-TP robot. Aware that the gunfire probably alerted nearby bandits, Snake quickly looted the robot’s body and hid in the warehouse.

Not thirty seconds later, a flatbed Bandit Technical came swerving up the dusty hill spraying dirt and sand along the ruts and crooks in the road. The truck skidded to a stop next to the CL4P-TP’s body and a gang of bandits stumbled and jumped from their positions. There were three of them; the driver drunkenly reeled from his position at the wheel gripping a flask with one hand and pulling up his raggedy grey-green pants with the other, the turret man swung the massive gun around twice until he reached the position of the dismantled CL4P-TP, dressed in similar loose and ripped garb, the badass bandit wore a metal and rubber gas mask over his face and black leather pants and boots without a shirt to hide his bulging abdominal muscles. He hefted his LMG and bullet belt necklaces then clambered down to the ground from his position on the back of the technical.

“Hey! Who’ss out here destoryin’ Claps? Thas _our_ jaaab!” the driver slurred as he took one sloppy step toward the robot body. The turret manager also shouted, more composed than his friend, “Yeah, we’ll smoke you out, man! Don’t hide!” He fired a couple of rounds at the bus stop and the road. The badass walked around the side of the truck inspecting his gang’s perimeter. Snake clutched his bag and held fast to the wall peeking around the doorway of the warehouse.

The badass smiled evilly under his mask. “I sssseeeeee yoouuuu!” An inhuman growl of a voice escaped from the badass’ throat, alerting his cronies to the vault hunter’s position. “Aha!” the driver hopped back in the truck and thrust his foot to the accelerator spinning the tires in the sand and whipping the vehicle toward the warehouse. “Here we come bit--!” The turret operator’s expletive was cut short by the sudden jerk of the technical. He was flung over the front windshield, run over and flattened by his careless drunken partner. “Shiiitt!” The driver screeched aloud as he spilled his drink over the front of his pants and flipped the truck into park, grinding it to a halt.

He jumped out and held his head in his hands, staring at his mate’s skull, crushed under the weight of the technical. “Ah fucking shit! Ben, Ben! Ben’s dead! Fuck!” he kicked the truck’s wheel and stumble-ran back to where he left the badass at the bus station. “I killed Ben!” the driver yelled again. The badass rolled his eyes and slapped the driver with the butt of his gun, knocking him unconscious. He picked up the driver and tied him in place in the back of the truck, then took Ben’s guns and ammunition from his backpack and pockets. He then directed his attention back to where the vault hunter was hiding.

“Vault hunter! You still back there?” the badass called into the shade of the warehouse. Snake thought it was odd hearing such a demonic voice speak such regular words. He did not replay to the badass, but instead waited. “Vault hunter!” the badass said again, “I’m sure you’ve heard, one of men has just been taken out, and the other is a drunken slump. We’re in need of recruit bandits back at camp, and now I’m out of two partners.

“If you’re interested, I can bring you back to camp and show you around. We’re all here for the vault as well and we’ve all agreed to search together.” Was this brute really offering Snake a position with the bandits? _Shit, finding this vault’ll be no problem if I just cheat all these assholes._ Snake thought to himself. “You won’t shoot?” Snake called cautiously from his hiding spot. “I will not. Here, listen.” Snake then heard a loud click and a thump, “That was me popping out the mag and dropping it on the ground. No bullets, no shooting.” Snake paused to gather his duffle and his confidence, then announced, “I’m coming out.” and he strolled into the sunlight.

\--

            Life at the bandit camp was not bad for Snake, he made himself at home there amongst other greedy untrustworthy robbers. He befriended and got along with pretty much every member of the gang. Snake took up a position with Kron, the badass he met out near the bus stop, and another bandit called Skag (he never bathed and, therefore, was as smelly as a skag). They replaced the alcoholic driver and Ben, now-deceased due to the drunken mistake made by the driver.

            Weeks later, they decided they had wasted enough time kicking about at the camp, and Snake, Skag, and Kron set off on their journey for the vault. They gathered their Machine guns and combat rifles, loaded up on ammunition and supplies, filled up on gas for the Bandit Technical, and traveled off into the rocky cracked wasteland of Pandora. The first night out, they lost track of the road and tried to turn around to make it back to camp to find a new map, but ended up going in the wrong direction for too long. The cool night winds began to pick up and soon blew into a swirling mess. “Shit, dust storm! We gotta stop and wait it out!” Skag shouted over the rushing winds, beginning to power down the technical. “No we can make it back to camp, Skag, I think we’re still pretty close!” Snake said and Kron agreed, “Yeah, it’s just over the hill, there. We can make it!”

            They didn’t make it. The storm was more powerful than they had anticipated and it destroyed the engine in the technical, blew it over, and engulfed it in the sand. The swirling sands of Pandora also took the lives of Kron and Skag, burying them in a grave of hot yellow sand. The only remaining living member was Snake, sunburned and barely functioning crawling his way out of the mess, more lost than he ever thought he could get on Pandora.

            Snake wandered the wasteland desert of Pandora, stumbling along for days at a time. Desperately climbing along, begging both known and unknown forces that the camp would be just over the next hill. No such luck came to him. All he wanted was to find the vault, if only he had just concentrated on just the vault and not gotten involved with the bandits, then he wouldn’t be in this mess.

            “Just find the vault then it will all be okay,” Snake tried to reassure himself, “Brave the desert, and you’ll be fine.” He began to form motivational methods in his head, telling himself if he gets out of this, there will be some kind of reward for him. Just find the vault and it will all be fine. Just find the vault. Find the vault. Find the vault. Find the vault. The vault. The vault. The vault. The vault. Vault. Vault. Vault.

            His obsession grew for the vault, Snake forgot all that was not the vault. He forgot his friends at home and at the bandit camp. He forgot his family and his home. He forgot himself, he forgot his own name. Snake wandered on through the desert, picking and peeling at his sunburned skin, consuming these dead flakey parts of himself to survive the long hot days and cold drawn-out nights on the barren Pandorian rock. He etched shapes into his skin with his nails, cutting a bruising the skin, worshiping the symbols as though they were Gods. The Gods of Pandora.

            “That’s who will reward me. They will help meif I help them. I must protect the vault. Kill the hunters that seek it as badly as I.” the bandit, formerly known as Snake, discovered. He screamed. He screamed his thoughts and prayers and emotions into the swirling desert. The desert screamed back, creating storms of dust that threw him about the land. The storms buried him, but each morning he awoke, still alive and coughing sand out of his aching lungs. He screeched himself hoarse, shrieking about his worst fears, most sacred desires, and darkest secrets. He filled the air with his horrid voice, saying anything that came to his deranged mind.

            This being that was once Snake, came across the skeleton of an Alpha skag during his travels one day. He cracked the brittle sun bleached bones against his knees and fashioned bone fragment chest armor, teeth and jaw bone necklaces, and ribcage knives. The bandit picked up the skull of the animal and broke off a large section of the face, creating a mask that fit over his own. He bit his skin open so that blood flowed forth, picked up a finger full of it and painted the vault symbol across the mask.

            He renamed himself the Protector. He became what they all warned him against becoming. Everyone back home had said to be careful. Said that Pandora drives even the most sane, insane, drives even the most collected into pits of madness and despair. Snake did not listen. He had assured himself he would be fine, his friends had confidence in him, and he had confidence in himself. Even that bus driver, Marcus said the best from some places get lost and go to shit here on Pandora.

            The recently renamed Protector had this sudden realization that cut through him like a knife through butter. There he stood, looking down at his half naked, painted body through his blood-soaked bone mask. He became what he swore he would not become. He screamed again and again into the sky, screaming his losses, his sorrows, his regrets, and his sadness. He threw himself into the sand, clawed at his chest and face, he squirmed about like an ant under a magnifying glass, baking in the heat of the sun.

            The shell of a man removed his bone mask, sharpened the edge of it with a rock, and cut his own throat open. He screamed and gargled gibberish through the blood flow until his very last breath. He bled out, dying on the broiling hard filthy floor of Pandora that day. He vanished into the sands and was lost forever.


End file.
